Recent reviews by 🚦AlphaDiode🚦

Never thought I'd see the day I'd be giving a thumbs down on a DLC for one of the Truck Sims. I've really tried to like this one but just can't. So what are the issues?

1. They completely revamped the lighting engine across the entire franchise and for the most part I feel it's a step backward. Colors are washed out and drab looking. Night time is so dark now it's a struggle to see anything. While tolerable, I'd much prefer they make this "new and improved" lighting engine a menu option.

2. Extremely narrow roads and turns (more accidents and getting stuck), Incredibly goofy, twisted, convoluted intersections and interchanges that look like they were designed by a 5 year old with a crayon and poster board and walled off freeways. If you miss a turn (which is really easy to do in this one) you'll often have to drive 100s of miles before you can turn around. No thanks.

3. Roundabouts, roundabouts, roundabouts. Seems you can't drive for 5 minutes without running into one. It's very annoying.

4. Toll booth, toll booths, toll booths. See number 3. You'll spend more time stopping at toll booths then driving in many places.

5. Clueless AI drivers. The AI drivers have never been great but with this release it seems they're even dumber. It's like they're on rails and don't even see you. More accidents and you always get faulted.

I bought this one mainly for the community event rewards but I just can't stomach finishing driving here. I'm out. Surely this is not representative of what things are really like in Spain. I honestly don't see any country could function with such a messed up infrastructure.

It's still a great game otherwise but sorry SCS you guys just missed the mark on this one.

It's surreal being able to fly over your own home town from your local airports and see many of the buildings and roads you recognize including your own house. At low altitudes you can even read some business names and signs on buildings. All the while, the weather, time of day, and traffic in the game match what's going on outside as close as possible. The game streams all of this real world data over your connection in real time as you fly. I flew to a local airport near my house and watched the sun go down outside my real window with light fluffy clouds on the horizon just as it was in the game. Pretty amazing. The only thing missing was the sound of a Cessna engine buzzing outside over my house. Of course you're not limited to your local area but I just found that an interesting place to start to see how accurate the maps are. And they're pretty darn good, based on the same satellite data that drives Bing maps.

The graphics are as close to photo realistic as I've seen yet in a flight sim and extremely immersive. Tons of in game options lets you tweak things as you desire and their are many in game flight assists and aids to make it easy to get into without having to be a professional pilot, although you can turn that stuff off as you progress and get better.

All this comes at a price of course. Steep hardware requirements, 130GB download and to really experience the best the game has to offer you need to have all of the live streaming content turned on, weather, local air traffic, cars driving down the road below, time of day etc. So if you're internet provider has you on a data cap, you'll have to watch that closely if you play often but there are in game tools to manage how much data the game uses and there is a handy tool which keeps track of how much data the game has used.

This is strictly civilian flight so if you're looking for fast paced combat, look elsewhere. But if you like the idea of having the the entire world as yours to explore anytime you want to, it's a great buy even at $59.99.

Deliciously violent. Brutally murder, dismember, head whack, burn, poison, humiliate and dominate orcs to fight for you in fortress sieges. It's okay though because they're orcs. Pit them against each other in equally brutal dogfight style pit battles to find the strongest for your army and weed out the weak ones while you sit back and enjoy the fight, every orc having it's own personality, strengths/weaknesses voice acting and story while leveling up into Legendary Commanders or back stabbing Rivals.

The game is heavy on combat, narrative cut scenes and LOTR lore. It has a pretty steep learning curve as well there are so many options, combat moves/styles, places, equipment, gems etc and navigating the menu interface is clunky. It feels overwhelming at first.

The real fun begins when you reach a point in the game where you can recruit an orc army for strategic siege battles, ala Total War style except you actually get to participate in the conquest with your troops to dominate the various regions in Mordor and ultimately confront the Dark Lord Sauron on his own turf, with his own soldiers. Infiltrating the enemy ranks by taking over War Chief's bodyguards and captains and then going in for the kill while they're "friends" betray them is terrific fun. The only bummer is it takes quite some time to get to this point. It's a very long game and will take quite some time to beat.

The missions do get a bit repetitive as most of them involve tracking down and killing or dominating orcs in the command hierarchy. But it's so much fun killing and beating them into submission that it keeps you wanting to do just one more mission.

Like the first game in the series, Orcs will taunt and trash talk you mercilessly in battle trying to get you mad and if they manage to beat you in a fight, they'll gloat before killing you and level up to become extremely tough and formidable adversaries. You'll stay up for hours trying to get vengeance or rage quit trying.

Great game if you can stomach the violence, and don't mind taking the time to practice and learn the intricacies of the combat mechanics and the clunky menu which is intensely frustrating at first.

9/10

It was a good day today. I managed to autopsy many corpses I had lying around in my morgue and retrieve all sorts of body parts to put in storage for "later use". The flesh carved from the corpses bones will make for a good supply of meat for burgers and sandwiches at the tavern (shhh, don't tell anyone). The local talking donkey will bring me a new corpse everyday, provided I meet his demands of being fed carrots and keeping his wagon wheels greased. Oh and giving him Sunday's off of course, seems reasonable.

I only bother to bury the finest quality corpses and I get paid for every corpse done so at the cemetary. I can burn the poor quality bodies at the crematorium or those mangled during my autopsies and still earn a payday. If I run out of space at the graveyard I can just exhume the bodies and throw them in the river to make space for more burials and more money, it's all good right? The Town Clergy have also appointed me Pastor at the local Church but nobody knows my horrible secrets and they come weekly to take part in my sermons and give me money and deepen their faith.

It's a lot of work but thankfully I can also resurrect some of these corpses into zombies to help with the more mundane tasks of gathering resources all the time. Gives me more time to enjoy the finer things in life such as the local witch burnings

I just woke up one morning and found myself in this strange world. There's a story here and a history of the town I'm in and the locals all have their dirty little secrets which I'll find out soon enough as I try to find out why I'm here and how to get back home. Until then I'll just keep plodding and grinding along, tending to my graveyard, church, tavern, gathering resources, crafting an endless barrage of "things" to make progress in this bizarre story and please the locals and improve my skills to make better and more advanced stuff and ultimately figure out how to get out of this God Forsaken place and back to my normal life in modern day suburbia.

Pathetic horns, reused engine sounds and worst of all the brakes are terrible. The brake gauge needle moves so slowly that they kick in about 30 seconds after you need them. Undriveable.

So good, I bought it both on GOG and Steam. There's so much to do and so massive it's mind boggling. I'm on my 2nd full playthrough to explore the games myriad of options and choices. While alot of the quests are essentially the same sort of quests found in all RPGs, what makes this different is in the story telling, depth of characters and immersion. Some of the quests are quite long and are mini games/stories in and of themselves full of treachery, deceipt, character development and uncertainty, with the NPCs all having their own hidden agendas and motivations.

You'll often find yourself making choices which impact the landscape and outcome of the game's characters, villages, quests and stories, relationships and it's never easy or clear what the best choice to make is. The graphics, sound, wonderful soundtrack and atmosphere really do a stellar job pulling you in.

The game isn't perfect and no game ever is, there are annoying issues with your horse path finding, getting hung up on objects and NPCs repeating dialog as you pass by (although much of said dialog is quite humorous) and sometimes weird camera angles but at the end of the day they're easy to ignore given the game's strengths.

You can develop Geralt in whatever way you like, care of one them multi branch skill trees/sets along with a crafting system which is easy to use and flexible enough to suit many play styles. It's by far the best of the series.The combat mechanics are excellent. You'll not be able to button mash your way through this one especially on the harder difficulties. Many fights (especially big boss fights) require careful preparation and planning using tactics, potions, oils and knowledge of your enemies strengths and weaknesses.

Wrapping up, this game is just dripping with lore and character and it manages to be dark, gritty, humorous, beautiful and perhaps most importantly, believable which is what sets it apart from so many other RPGs out there. It really sets a new standard, and it's going to be a touch act to follow.

It's hard not to compare this to ETS2 but that is the standard SCS have set for themselves. So what have they done well and what's new to like? They've done a remarkable job capturing the American feel of small towns, large cities, surrounding countryside and the AI vehicles. The detail that has gone into the local businesses is terrific. Graphics are excellent and on par with ETS2 with a slight improvement in texture quality. The game runs stable with not so much as a single crash or hiccup in 14 hours.

It's also nice being able to drive American trucks and trailers, and is a welcome change of pace from the Euro HGV trucks. There is a new parking option I like when delivering loads that you can gain extra XP if you put the trailer exactly where the customer wants it or in certain places. It sort of harkens back to the challenge of the dangerous drives of Scania Truck Sim or Truck & Trailers though on a much smaller scale. The world feels alot more alive with NPCs that actually are busy doing stuff instead of just standing around and many other little details too numerous to mention.

That said is there anything else not to like? Nothing really bad but it falls short in a few areas that I had higher hopes for:

1. Sound - While the truck sound effects are adequate, many are recycled from ETS2. The engines sounds are just okay but inaccurate, engine brake is far too muffled and the air brakes don't sound anything like the Kenworths and Peterbilts I see everyday with their brash loud blasts of air, rattling diesel engines and jake brakes so loud you nearly soil yourself if you're next to one.

2. Weigh stations - This is another new game mechanic which sounds good on paper but adds little if anything to the game. I'm not really sure what they're trying to do here but after nearly 14 hours of playtime I've been required to stop at two weigh stations and nothing happened either time so it doesn't add anything significant that I can see.

3. Game size - The game world is small compared to the initial release of ETS2 and of course with all of the ETS2 map add ons, SCS has a very long way to go to catch up. It took a long time for them to just create two states and months for Arizona which still isn't available. It makes one wonder if they'll ever get the entire continental USA.

4. Only two truck brands to choose from which is a real bummer. While I'm sure the licensing will be worked out eventually for other brands, they could have at least released them under ficticious names, assuming they're finished with the modeling. We really need to see Freightliner, Mack, International and Western Star to name a few.

In summary I give it a recommendation to hard core sim fans, SCS fans or trucking fans but more casual sim fans might want to wait until the game matures more and more content is added.

On to the big three things most people look for in a game I'll give the following ratings:

Graphics - 9/10
Sound - 6/10
Gameplay -8/10

Overall - 7.5/10

20 minutes in to a new game and I got stuck on a puzzle. 10/10!

Playway has really done a great job with this one. I enjoyed CMS2014 but they managed to build on that and improve it in almost every way. And all with Kickstarter and a low pledge goal. As the name implies you run an auto shop repair business. But new and improved for 2015 are the cars have many more parts now and the repairs are a good deal more involved. You also earn XP now as you work and complete jobs which can be used to unlock more advanced diagnostic tools like the test path, OBD scanner, compression tester etc and other repair abilities.

There is also an unlockable paint shop now as well so you can do body and paint work and an auction house where you can buy junk cars for parts or fix them up and sell them for profit. Once you earn enough to get the extra parking lot, you can store your cars for service or just collect them. Customers call in on the phone with jobs you can take or decline. An all new better organized parts shop and tablet access eliminates running back and forth to the computer to buy parts.

Test driving the vehicle now and using your diagnostic tools generates a parts list condition report for certain systems saving you time poking around and disassembling the vehicle looking for bad parts.

All in all there's quite a bit to do and highly recommended if you like puzzle games, working on cars, or are a simulator fan.

A head whacking, orc face stabbing good time this is. Gameplay is like a combination of Assassins Creed, Dishonored, and Tomb Raider but set in the Tolkien universe. There are a large variety of missions and quests to do most of which involve killing orcs which while repetitive I just can't seem to get enough of. Orc captains level up and become your Nemesis if they defeat you in battle and they remember you and taunt you at your next encounter. Nicely done cutscenes tell the story as you complete main quests.

You gain power and ability points to spend by completing missions and you can of course upgrade your weapons and choose your abilities care of one those multi-branch skill trees. Graphics and sounds are superb as is the voice acting.

The built in photo/screenshot editor is the best I've ever seen in a game. It's almost a mini game itself and lets you really dress up and add dramatic cinematic effects to your screenshots.

I definitely recommend this one if you like any or all of the below:

A. Stealth games
B. Mercilessly slaughtering orcs
C. Are a fan of the Tolkien's Lord of The Rings
D. Like fighting games or action RPGs